Some pictures of the outside of my house.....

Tess0707 · Senior Member

Some pictures of the outside of my house.....

shellyinphx · Long Lost DiMera Daughter

Beautiful. So when can me and Jolene come up for a sleepover..Haha

TinaLord68 · The Smiling T.L. Fan

very quaint, do you use your pool and firepit? Nice size Yard!

Tess0707 · Senior Member

I use the pool every opportunity that I get. I have had it for 16 years, and definitely have gotten my money's worth out of it. I also love to light the chiminea at night and sit outside and relax. I picked up some paint for it, and it's on my to-do list. It really rusted up this past winter. I have had it for around eight years, and it is another item on the definitely gotten my money's worth out of.

It is not a big house, but it was a great place to raise Sabrina in. I have been here for 18+ years now, and even though I am forever talking about selling and getting something bigger, I really have the maintenance of this place down to a science. I do all the yard work myself, thank goodness for my riding mower!

shellyinphx · Long Lost DiMera Daughter

thats awesome. Anytime you want a weekend visitor you let me know

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

Oh, Tess -- that is just beautiful. And so charming too.

You have no idea how much I love stone, and I also love daylilies, so your entry is right up my alley.

Beautiful yard too! Love all the trees, love the picket fence, love the back patio, love the window boxes, love the stone on the chimney, love the proud flag...

You've worked hard on your beautiful house and yard, and it really shows. Thank you so much for sharing the pictures.

Tess0707 · Senior Member

You guys are so sweet, thank you!

Shelly, any time that you and Joleen can make the trek up here, please come up. My schedules are generally wide open.

KaeEll · Original Soap Dish Diva

I love stone patios! We had one put in 3 years ago when we had to rip up the deck for water-proofing and we are so pleased with it. It's exactly like yours, Sophia. Exactly!! So of course, I love your garden, too.

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

The very BEST thing that we EVER did to this house was to put in our front flagstone patio! You can see a few little glimpses of it in Lucy's pictures that I put up before the Fourth of July...

Our front yard is on a slight hill, and we had some stupid little shrubs in front of our windows, on either side of our front door. The shrubs on the flat part were fine (at the top of the hill), but the shrubs going down the hill just looked wimpy.

Also, we had just a basic cement stoop in front of our door. Our kids, of course, used to love to play in the yard, and my husband and I would sit on that stoop to watch them, but it certainly wasn't very comfortable! And, as we began to get older and older, it wasn't all that easy to get up and down either...

Ultimately, we noticed that the stoop was beginning to pull away from the house itself (the builder hadn't put in a proper foundation), and so we had to address the issue. At that stage, I said, "I want my front patio!" I had talked about having one for YEARS.

So we had a beautiful two-level curved flagstone patio built (got rid of the hill issue next to the house), with stone facing on all of it. We love it so much, and have enjoyed sitting out there with drinks while watching the neighbors walk or drive by.

We had this put in about seven years ago, and we STILL get compliments from strangers as they walk by. We're on a corner, and I'll tell you that this one thing increased our "curb appeal" by leaps and bounds! I love the social aspect of it too. Neighbors stop and chat with us, and sometimes come on up and sit with us whereas they wouldn't even see us on our back deck.

KaeEll · Original Soap Dish Diva

You're lucky to have neighbours that you like to chat with, Moore. We've let our cedar hedges grow to almost 8 feet tall trying our best to block out the people around us.

On one side there's a family of mincing twerpy nerds who are just too smug for words. In back, one family we call the UFO's because they have tacky flashing tube lights around their deck and play awful polka music mixed in with Kenny G. Next to them, again in the back are the "new weirds"- the original weirds moved away. The son liked to peep at us through the hedge. (shudder)

Across the street is a family so annoying I don't even want to talk about them. The husband called the police and had our car ticketed ($60) for parking overnight on the road in front of our house. 'Nuff said. I call their vile children "whelps". Then there's the really lovely young couple on our west side. Love them and their adorable son, but they're in Italy all summer again.

Count your blessings, Moore! If we weren't so somfortable here, I'd move just to get away from the neighbours. Oh, and I fertilise the hedges with dog poop, bwahahaha.

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

I cannot even believe that your neighbors called the cops on your parked car! Are you not allowed to park on the street? No one in our neighborhood would know what to do if we couldn't park on the street! There wouldn't be enough room for everyone's cars...

Many of our neighbors have lived here as long as we have which is more years than I think I want to mention!!! We've watched our next-door-neighbors raise six kids, and now their grandkids are coming back to play in their back yard. Our neighbors around the corner have also been here as long as we have (we all moved in when the neighborhood was first built). One neighbor across the street is an original, and most of the "newer" folks have been here over twenty years!

Our neighbor across the other street moved in at least 25 years ago, and raised three children in that house. Their oldest son is a successful businessman, their second son is a partner in a major law firm, and their daughter is a doctor! About five years ago, they decided to buy a larger new house less than 1/2 a mile from here, and sold this one to their lawyer-son. He and his wife are now raising their OWN three children in it: A set of twins (boy and girl), and another little girl.

This neighborhood is like a 1950s time warp, dropped from a space ship! Our kids know every single neighbor, up and down all the streets in our immediate portion of the larger development. I love that they've had this continuity, and I love seeing our various neighbors' children return with children of their own.

We've attended neighborhood parties together, holiday open houses, birthday parties, anniversary parties, bridal showers, Christenings, weddings, bat mitvahs, and (unfortunately) funerals. They've made friends with our various dogs over the years, and we've literally borrowed sugar, eggs, and gardening tools from each other!

When I nearly died from that blood clot in 1991, one of our longtime neighbors happened to be on call in the emergency room that day, and being a vascular surgeon, was the doctor who saved my life! My own neighbor... Another neighbor who lives down the street is an intensive care nurse, and was on duty as I recovered.

So, we wave to the neighbors as we sip our beverages on our front patio. LOL...!!!

And, I DO count my blessings.

Tess0707 · Senior Member

Wow, the front of your house sounds beautiful Moore. I love fieldstone, and there is tons of it here. A builder wants to put in a 32 house sub-division further down my street, on 130 acres that is behind me. I will not see any of the houses, because it is wetlands behind my house, and I own an acre of the wetlands.

I love to watch HGTV, and the show Ground Breakers. Where my fieldstone patio is in the back, there used to be a deck. My backyard, except for where the pool and patio areas are, was woods up till five years ago. That was a huge project that I took on, having the trees cut, and then the yard put in. When that was done, we took the deck off of the house, because I did not like the feeling of being up on the deck, and away from the yard. I actually have to rocking chairs that go with my lawn furniture, which are in my basement. I had to buy replacement cushions this year, and they only had 8 at the store, so I left the two rockers in the basement. I will have to go on-line to see if I can get the two cushions from K-Mart. They were sold out earlier.

Moore and KaEll, you guys should take pictures of your outdoor living areas, I would love to see them. I will bet that they are spectacular!

I did outsource the lawn fertilization this year, to Scotts company. Last summer, I somehow managed to over fertilize parts of the lawn and effectively killed sections of it off. The odd part was that it was in circles, so I looked like I had crop circles, ready for the alien invasion.

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

My husband and I were outside last night with his camera, snapping pictures of his new "midlife crisis" car, and I decided to click a few of our patio.

I'm clearly no photographer (which I already knew) because half of them turned out blurry! I didn't take any really LONG shots of the front of the house and yard because they would have looked bizarre. We're in the process of getting our shutters painted, and one set of shutters is painted halfway up. We were trying to choose colors, and decided that it would be easier to tell if we painted a shutter or two.

Anyway, when the shutters are all finished, I'll take pictures of the whole thing so you can get a better idea of the "sweep" of the entire patio...

So, PLEASE forgive my bad photography, but maybe you'll get a bit of an idea what I was talking about.

The picture of the lower patio is blurred, but it's a cute little space (bag of mulch aside), and the flowers next to it look pretty. The look even prettier when they're in focus!

Also, when you look at the longer shots of the patio, in the distance (past the front door) you can see a bit of a very low stone wall. That wall actually continues farther, but I didn't take a picture of that part.

Keep your fingers crossed that I can actually upload these pictures!

KaeEll · Original Soap Dish Diva

Oh thank you, Moore. Very pretty!

It's a rainy yucky day here and if it clears up tomorrow, I'll post some pictures of my garden (what's left of it, thanks to Chloe and her trampling). I think I have some from last Labour Day - see if I can figure out how to post them up here. I know I CAN do it because I've done it before. I know I can do the photobucket thing, so I may link it that way.

Moore, the guy that called the police on us is an asshole. We can park on the street, but not overnight. Nobody really cares if you do for whatever reason, but it is against a bylaw. If the police are having a slow night, they might respond to a complaint. Wouldn't it have been so much nicer for Mr. AH to have left a note on the windshield asking us to move ahead or back a bit to make his morning egress from his driveway easier? I think that may have been his problem. It is a narrow street. But still, sheesh!

One day he rang my doorbell (same guy) demanding that we change the frequency of our doorbell because sometimes it would ring his too, and they had a newborn. So I changed it. Nope - not good enough. He wanted my instruction manual so he could change his too. I couldn't find it. It turned out that the fellow next door's garage door opener was the same frequency and whenever he came home, my doorbell would ring. So we had a good laugh over it and coordinated our frequencies to be different. But still Mr. AH's doorbell rang. Again, he came pounding at my door, very angry and demanded that I remove the whole thing. That was the last time I spoke to him.

He (the AH) then took up watching my every move. And he'd go through our recycle bins put out for collection with a stick, and his little son! One day when I went out in my car to measure the distances around blocks (I had taken up walking to try to lose some lard), I was going back and forth several times, resetting the trip odometer each time in my driveway. AH was on the front lawn with his kid (I call his horrid children "the whelps") and the kid said aloud to his father "she's back again, daddy". I wonder what the heck they thought I was doing!! And don't even get me started on the wife! She knows I have no use for either of them. I'm always civil, but I can give a look that could freeze a pot of boiling oil.

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

I know how to give those looks too, KaeEll. Ask my kids. Better yet, ask my doll club! LOL...

At our last meeting in June, I was teasing one of our members (someone I love dearly), and I shot her an evil look in jest, but it actually ended up scaring half of our members! It was my "blink wrong, and you will die" look that my kids are very familiar with. Several members gasped, "DID YOU SEE THAT LOOK???" It was even more noticable because I'm the club president, so I stand up at the end of a long table where everyone is normally facing my direction since I run the meetings. The look I shot Sue was seen by all...!!!

But, we all had a good laugh over it.

What I want to know is how Mr. AH has TIME to spy on your every move when he has children in his household, including a newborn??? The guy clearly has a screw loose, and he's teaching his kids to become nuts as well. Too sad... Funny story about the doorbell, though. I don't think that we can do anything to change ours; we'd have to replace it entirely!

Most of our neighbors park their cars on the street here in our neighborhood. These homes have room for only one car in the garages (our builder was also an AH, but don't get me started), and most of us have a lot of our gardening stuff in there. Unless the garages are kept prisine clean, with not much more than pruning shears in there, you don't have room to park your car!

Consequently, most of us put one car (can put two, but it's inconvenient) in the driveway, and the rest out front. At ONE point about two years ago, we had SIX cars here, whenever everyone was home from their various schools. This was before our oldest daughter moved to NC, and our son moved out. Each of us had a car, and my old wagon was still here too. (It isn't anymore...) Now that our youngest is home for the summer, we have three, but when she goes back to Arizona (Oh, Lordy -- I'm thinking about that trip again!), we'll be down to two.

But, if I lived in your neighborhood, I would have been in deep trouble with the extra vehicles!

OH - I meant to add that it was an absolutely magnificent day here today. Normally it's very hot and VERY muggy this time of year. Today was the perfect summer day. It's warm, but not muggy, and there has been a lovely breeze all day long. We spent much of the morning, and part of the afternoon out on that patio! I'm obviously inside right now, but am going to head back outside a little later. May take my needlepoint, and a glass of wine.

-- Edited by Moore ideas at 18:11, 2007-07-14

KaeEll · Original Soap Dish Diva

Well, here's the link, but it's not "clickied", so if a mod could help me out here. I've half given up on tech stuff for today.

I added 5 pictures from my album - all are last year's gatherings. And as luck would have it, I'm not in any of them, since I was taking the pics. Photography isn't a forte, snort.

Maybe the second link works?

https://s79.photobucket.com/albums/j154/KaeEll/?start=0

shellyinphx · Long Lost DiMera Daughter

hmm, Im not a mod but let me try to post the link in my email

Kae's Pictures

Great pictures Kae..

FYI, if you need to post a link..copy the link and click on the picture thing above that looks like a chain link and paste it in there...another window will open up allowing you to give the link a name.

you guys all have great houses

-- Edited by shellyinphx at 18:41, 2007-07-14

Moore ideas · Moore Ideas Not More Ideas!

LOVED the pictures, KaeEll. Gorgeous, and everyone looks like they're having so much fun!

Your back yard is just perfect for your grandchildren to run in. Chloe is quite beautiful herself, and clearly LOVES to be right in the middle of all parties.

We also have an arbor at the side of our house, passing through to the back. So funny...

Right now, I'm feeling rather overwhelmed by all of the work that needs doing on our property. The ivy is about to take over the world, and I'm about ready to have someone come in to do major ripping! I love the way it looks, but I'm so sick of clipping it a gazillion times a year, that I think I want to take out a lot now. Time for a change!

This year, we've had barely any opportunity to do much maintenance, and my husband was entirely out of commission anyway because of his surgery. It doesn't take much neglect for ivy to seize control again.

KaeEll · Original Soap Dish Diva

Thanks, Shelly, for the clickie link! And Moore, I know what you mean about ivy!! That one side of the house with the Virginia creeper vine went nuts this spring and we had to whack the heck out of it. The creeper went everywhere, choked out a climbing hydrangea and some sweet little Boston ivy. A few years back, Nick planted a grape vine further towards the back of the house on the east side, and OMG! Today it's gobbled up almost everything! I'll send a picture later. I haven't had my coffee yet.

Re the grapes - the raccoons wait until they are just perfect, then in the middle of the night, call their buddies and one will climb up the wall, hand pick each and every grape, toss them down to their friends and by morning, there isn't a single grape left, just the skeleton of the stems. The racket they make during their grape fest! And now, apparently, we have a possum in the area who is making his claim to the various edibles in the gardens. And skunks.

There are disadvantages to living so close to a ravine. I have issues with urban wildlife.

-- Edited by KaeEll at 09:37, 2007-07-15